Giuliani's Future

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has scheduled a meeting with his top advisers to plan his return to political life, the New York Post said yesterday.

Two Republicans familiar with the talks said Mr. Giuliani has not ruled out a New York gubernatorial run in 2006 and is likely to do so if he concludes he can't win the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and if Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, does not run for a fourth term.

"If he does run for governor and wins," the unidentified source told the Post, "he's going to stay in Albany and try to straighten out the state, not run for president the next year."

Political analysts say Mr. Giuliani easily could wait well into 2006 to start a presidential bid, but must make up his mind no later than next spring if he wants to run for governor.

"Rudy's aware of the problems he would face running for president in 2008 and knows it wouldn't be easy," the source told the newspaper, apparently referring to positions Mr. Giuliani holds on guns, abortion and other politically sensitive stances that are outside of the Republican mainstream.

Republican ousted

Playgirl Editor in Chief Michele Zipp has been fired after revealing that she voted Republican in the 2004 election, Matt Drudge reports at his Web site (www.drudgereport.com).

Miss Zipp, in an e-mail, told Mr. Drudge she was dismissed after a liberal backlash at the magazine.

"Hello Drudge,

"After your coverage of my article about coming out and voting Republican, I did receive many letters of support from fellow Republican voters, but it was not without repercussions. Criticism from the liberal left ensued. A few days after the onslaught of liberal backlash, I was released from my duties at Playgirl magazine," she said.

"After underlings expressed their disinterest of working for an outed Republican editor, I have a strong suspicion that my position was no longer valued by Playgirl executives. I also received a phone call from a leading official from Playgirl magazine, in which he stated with a laugh, 'I wouldn't have hired you if I knew you were a Republican.'

"I just wanted to let you know of the fear the liberal left has about a woman with power possessing Republican views."

Fooling Congress

"If a political gaffe consists of inadvertently revealing the truth, then Sean Treglia, a former program officer for the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, has just ripped the curtain off of the 'good government' groups that foisted the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill on the country in 2002," John Fund writes at www.OpinionJournal.com.

"What Mr. Treglia revealed in a talk last year at the University of Southern California is that far from representing the efforts of genuine grass-roots activists, the campaign finance reform lobby was controlled and funded by liberal foundations like Pew. In a tape obtained by the New York Post, Mr. Treglia tells his USC audience they are going to hear a story he can reveal only now that campaign finance reform has become law.

" 'The target audience for all this [foundation] activity was 535 people in [Congress],' Mr. Treglia says in his talk. 'The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot. That everywhere [Congress] looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform.'

"The truth was far different. …

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